Bleach Paintings

These are a series of works that aim to speak to an Africa I was torn from 250 years ago in negative, a negative to be developed within the soul of the viewer providing a roadmap home. I was inspired by Yoruba Adire cloth, resist-dyed indigo fabric that is sewn, tied, stamped, or drawn with cassava paste to create complex, hypnotic textile works. Mine are made with bleach on denim -- bleach a caustic, toxic means of cleansing; and denim, the American social fabric and the product of indigo and cotton, themselves raw products of centuries of bondage. In these works, I try to pick up bloodied, poisonous materials of capitalism and colonization and reconfigure them into a freedom song.